YCLSA Statement on Steinhoff Corruption

19 December 2017

The Young Communist League of South Africa (uFasimba) is deeply concerned but not really shocked by the brazen corrupt activities of Steinhoff company. This is part of the wider reality of monopoly capital in general and white monopoly capital in particular.

The dominance of white-owned media has swayed almost everyone into believing that such corruption is mere "irregularities" and not corruption.

If it was the public sector everyone would have hurriedly declared "corruption by a black government", but since this involves white masters of capital albeit in cahoots with a coterie of black share-holders, intead of explicitly saying it's corruption, words such as, "accounting mismatch", "financial incongruities", "earnings inflation", or "artificial inflation of earnings", "limitations in full disclosure", "off-balance sheet financing", etc.

At the receiving end of these insensitive acts by private entities that have become a law unto themselves are workers. Worker's pension and provident funds are severely affected. In this case, this is exemplfied by the Public Investement Corporation (PIC's) loss of R14 billions, which in actual fact, is workers money.

This Steinhoff corruption affects every customer of Pep, Arkemans, Tekkie Town, and many other retail outlets upon which workers are relatively depended and (pension and provident) fund management entities. It thus affects many workers and the poor.

As the YCLSA we cannot exonerate the political leadership of the Republic, at the helm of which is the ANC, from this malaise. Many of these national but mostly multinational companies strategically disempower leaders to act by poaching politicians to become share-holders without any veto power or what are sometimes called 'non-executive directorship' positions in private companies, which are more of ceremonoious than decision-making positions.

The ruling political elite has not been and is still not willing to transform the economy for the benefit of everyone. Typical of a neo-colonial capitalist imperialist elite, it has always gleefully danced to the tune of capital flows, retrenchment under the guise of "labour flexibility", casualisation, labour brokerage, slave wages, etc.

Otherwise, calls for the nationalization-cum-socialization of the means of production by the SACP and YCLSA could not have fallen on deaf ears.

The crisis of moral legitimacy that the political elite suffers and the beyond-redemption image of the corporate elite (which mostly white and male) compels the workers and the poor to rely on themselves and never ever think that the self-interested political and corporate elite will ever deliver them from the scourge of poverty.

We must be politically, ideologically and psychologically prepared for an ardous yet revolutionary task, and more so difficulties associated with such a revolutionary task in pursuit true liberation of workers and the poor.

What the working class needs is not better devils but decent, proper and humanly living conditions.

We must fight corruption, and never be hood-winked into some 'corruption of this ones ' is better than the corruption of 'those ones'. Corruption is corruption; it must be called and challenged for what it is, because the bottmomline is: corruption impoverishes and pauperizes workers.

The means of production must be in the hands of workers and the poor to stop the cancerous scourge of corruption. This must be the bottomline because the YCLSA, the poor and workers say so.